Tony Defries

Anthony Defries (born 3 September 1943) is a British former music manager and impresario. He managed David Bowie's career during his elevation to global stardom, but later fell out with him in a contract dispute. He established a rights management organisation called MainMan and helped launch the careers of Iggy Pop, Mick Ronson, Mott the Hoople, Dana Gillespie, Lou Reed, Luther Vandross and John Cougar Mellencamp. Defries and MainMan have received multiple awards for their achievements in the music industry.

Early life One of four children born to Edward and Lily Defries, the family had a second-hand and antique business close to Shepherd's Bush Market. In 1944, children were being evacuated from London to escape the V-1 flying bombs. Defries was too young to be evacuated as his mother had two young children and was expecting another, so he was placed into foster care and returned to the family after the war. He suffered from severe asthma and attended a school for children with special needs.

Career Early career and GEM Music Group Defries started his career at the age of 16 in a number of junior positions at various firms of solicitors. While he was a legal executive at the lawfirm of Martin Boston & Co. Because of his dealings with Most and his problem-solving abilities, he was approached by his future business partner, Laurence Myers, whose accounting firm were handling Most's accounts at the time. Ossie Byrne and Tony Macaulay. Defries was responsible for proposing and overseeing legal proceedings for Tony Macaulay in what became a landmark case against his publishers, Schroeder Music, to recover his copyrights. The case of Schroeder Music Publishing vs Macaulay was resolved in Macaulay's favour in the House of Lords, setting a precedent used by many other songwriters to gain better terms.

In 1969, Defries and Myers formed the GEM Music Group, an independent music label, music publishing, rights management and personal management company. GEM's first release, on Bell Records, was "Love Grows (Where my Rosemary Goes)" performed by Edison Lighthouse, and written and produced by Tony Macaulay. It reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in 1970.

In 1970, Olav Wyper, the head of Philips UK, recommended Defries to Bowie who was dissatisfied with his manager Ken Pitt and needed help. Defries realised Bowie's potential and Myers has said "Tony had the vision. His great ability was, far more than I did, he knew what a star David was going to be". Tony Zanetta and Jamie Andrews.

Defries had a zero-tolerance drug policy This concert took place just two days after Bowie's performance of "Starman" on Top of the Pops.

With Bowie on the brink of stardom (Ziggy Stardust hit No. 5 and Hunky Dory #3 on the UK charts and hundreds of Ziggy clones attended his concerts), Defries informed his staff "As far as RCA in America are concerned, the young man with red hair sitting at the end of this table is the biggest thing to come out of England since the Beatles. And if we get this right there’s every possibility we will be as big as the Beatles, if not bigger". Defries arranged to fly over American journalists to see Bowie live in preparation for his upcoming US tour.

Defries instructed Tony Zanetta to set up the MainMan office in an Upper East Side New York apartment and he employed a cavalcade of exotic characters. The first North American concert date was September 22, in Cleveland for an audience of three thousand and the tour ended December 2 at Tower Theatre, Pennsylvania. After that first concert Defries had promised they would come back to play Cleveland in a bigger venue holding ten thousand people and that is exactly what they did.

MainMan artists were among the best rock 'n rollers of their time, and the company's culture was to treat all their artists as equals and to ensure that all their needs were met. A lot of cash was spent as the artists had a high burn rate. Bowie was doing very well, but "not selling anywhere near a Rolling Stones or Elton John-like level until 1975".

Defries saw Mick Ronson as an extraordinary musical talent and believed he could have a solo career and together they devised a course to stardom, starting with concerts at the Rainbow Theatre. According to Ronson "the question of whether those Rainbow concerts were good ones or bad is beside the point. The fact that I managed to sell the place out two nights running must mean that people thought I was worth seeing". "Ronson made David Bowie’s new music bigger, tougher and sexier. He was the muscle in the mix," Bowie recalled, "Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character, Ziggy and Mick were the personification of the rock & roll dualism". Ronson, who wrote the string arrangements for both Bowie's "Life on Mars?" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day". John Mellencamp also said that Ronson helped save and arrange "Jack & Diane".

Bowie / Defries Left to right: Dana Gillespie, Tony Defries and David Bowie at Andy Warhol's Pork at London's Roundhouse in 1971. alt=At the start of their relationship, Bowie and Defries became very close friends. Bowie described their relationship as a "marriage-made-in-heaven" and said they were "very, very strong buddies", even though he understood that if they had no business together, they probably wouldn't see each other. In 1997 the Bowie Bonds began as a stock of $55 million and appeared on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.

In 2011 Defries was sued by Capitol Records for copyright infringement over misuse of Bowie material. He lost the lawsuit with damages and costs against him exceeding US$9 million.

"In the early days," Bowie said in 2003, "all the greats like Mick Jagger and John Lennon were forever telling me the same thing: don't have anything to do with managers. They were always very adamant about that and, in hindsight, it was good advice. But it was usually just after I'd signed a contract with another one."

Later career In 1991, he founded IOTA Inc, a private technology research company which worked with major universities and government agencies on a range of communications and other technologies, securing a number of patents. Defries worked with Oxford University Communications Engineering Department and leading UK optical / photonic companies and research groups on the design and development of optical wireless technology.

In 2005 Defries founded Matter Inc, a Caltech/Stanford startup for plasmonic research and development with scientists from Stanford, California Institute of Technology and New York University to work on materials science, nanophotonics and energy related projects.

Personal life In 1975, his long-term girlfriend, Melanie McDonald, gave birth to his first daughter, Fleur Dominique Defries. He then married Marlene Weir in London, in 1986, and their daughter Tatiana Alexandra Defries was born in 1988.